Security & Privacy

OdinCam is built so that what your cameras see stays yours. Here is what that means in practice, and what it doesn't cover.

Only your devices can see your cameras. Event pictures, the motion heatmap, the still in each camera tile, clips, the timeline and Live View (picture and sound) are encrypted on the camera for the devices in your household, and only those devices hold the keys to open them. The relay server that carries them between your devices can't open them, and neither can we. When you hold to talk through a camera, your voice is encrypted the same way.

What the camera saw stays private too. "Rex barking" or "a person at the left of the picture" travels encrypted the same way. The server only knows that something moved or made a sound, and when. A camera's battery level is encrypted the same way.

Your settings are private too. Recording schedules, the part of the picture each camera watches, Home & away and spoken warnings are encrypted for your household and signed by the device that changed them, so the server can't read them or change them. So are the names you give a Mac's extra cameras, and the camera's name on each alert.

Nothing is analysed anywhere else. Spotting motion and sound, telling people, dogs and cats apart, and recognising which of your pets it is all happen on the camera itself. Your pet photos stay on the Mac.

Recordings stay with you. Clips are saved on your Mac, in the folder you choose, or on the iPhone or iPad you use as a camera. The server passes a clip along when you watch it and never keeps a copy. The small file saved beside each clip, listing what the camera noticed during it, stays in that folder too and is never sent anywhere. While a camera is on it asks our server for the time about every half hour, to check its clock is right; that request carries nothing about you.

Strangers can't join. A new device joins your household only when you confirm that the six-digit codes on both screens match (see Household). A phone connects to your cameras only with a short code from your Mac that works once and expires in minutes.

Passwords and keys are kept in the Keychain on each device, and never in backups. Connections to the server are always encrypted, and on your own Wi-Fi your devices check each other's identity before sending pictures or video. On the Mac, OdinCam runs in Apple's app sandbox: it can reach only the camera, the microphone, the network and the folders you give it. On iPhone and iPad, clips recorded or opened for watching and warning recordings can't be read while the device is locked, and camera-mode recordings, warning recordings and your home's location are kept out of backups.

We don't collect anything about you. There is no advertising, no tracking and no analytics in the apps. OdinCam doesn't need an account with your name or email address. If you set up email alerts, your mail details stay on your Mac.

Your location never leaves your phone. OdinCam uses it only if you turn on Use This iPhone to Tell When I'm Home (see "Monitoring when everyone's away"). The phone works out for itself whether you're home or away, and sends only "home" or "away", encrypted for your household like everything else.

What the server can see, so you know exactly:

• The names of the devices in your household (each device's name is part of the signed household list that keeps strangers out).
• When each event happened, and whether it was motion, sound or both.
• Whether each camera is monitoring, and when it was last online.
• When a device last changed a camera's settings, but not what they are.

Pushed alerts go through Apple's notification service. It sees that an alert arrived and a general wording, "Something happened on a camera.", but not the camera's name, whether it was motion or sound, the picture or what was seen; your iPhone fills those in. (A camera still on an older version of OdinCam puts its name and "Motion detected" on the alert until it's updated.)

Email alerts are the one thing not locked to your devices. They go out through your own email account, so your email provider can read them like any other email. They carry no picture unless you turn on Include a picture from the camera; with it on, each alert also carries one still picture, which your email provider can see too. Clips and Live View are never emailed and stay locked to your devices. To change this on the Mac:

1. Open Settings › Alerts.
2. Turn Include a picture from the camera on or off, or turn off Email me when motion is sustained to stop alert emails altogether.

Only your devices can switch your cameras. Turning monitoring or recording on or off is signed by the iPhone or iPad that asks, and the camera checks the signature before it does anything, so the server can't switch a camera off. Your iPhone shows "Monitoring" only when the camera itself says so, and each picture and alert detail is signed by the camera that took it, so nobody else can pass one off as your camera's. (Until all your iPhones and iPads are updated, or until December 1, 2026, a camera still accepts requests from older versions of OdinCam.)

Taking a device out of the household signs it out: it can't open new pictures or video, see your events, get alerts or turn monitoring on or off. Your Macs do this as soon as they hear of the change, usually within a minute. Only a Mac can sign a device out, so keep at least one Mac in your household.

We check OdinCam's security regularly, including a review of the apps and the server on a rotating schedule, and fix what it finds. To delete your recordings, events or pets, see "Deleting your recordings and data".

OdinCam is made by Abizander Software, the "we" on this page.